


human

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Better times, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feels, Love not as solution but as a crutch, M/M, POV John Watson, POV Second Person, Sherlock is loved, They love each other and I cry, Two men in love, self-neglect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 08:04:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4952752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock isn't always beautiful, isn't always brilliant. It's never mattered less.</p>
            </blockquote>





	human

**Author's Note:**

> Written on phone, sorry for possible mistakes.

He isn't always beautiful:

not when he's in one of his moods, and the back of the sofa is the one thing he keeps staring at for more than forty-eight hours at a time, save those two minutes a day when his body bullies him into peeing. He doesn't always shower then; for all that he's fastidious and clean and looks impeccably smart and handsome when you go out, Sherlock in a mood is a right pig. He doesn't care about the way his hair thins as it becomes greasy, doesn't care how it becomes flat until it's plastered to the contours of his skull and along his forehead. He doesn't change out of his clothes, either; his faded t-shirt and sleeping trousers underneath the dressing gown stay on for whatever amount of time Sherlock deems necessary to spend motionless on the couch. When he moves past you on the morning of the third day--expertly having ignored all your gentle (and not so gentle) probings to eat, drink, get up, play a game, check his e-mails for a new case--you catch a whiff of his sweat and skin, slightly sour and thick. It doesn't disgust you. It couldn't ever. It makes you sad, the same way the pallid shade of his skin, the dullness of his eyes, the slowness and inaccuracy of his usually swift and elegant movements make you sad. No, Sherlock isn't always beautiful.

He isn't always brilliant:

sometimes he really doesn't talk for days on end. You're always glad when he keeps himself in the living room--the sofa--in one of his funks instead of his room. (It's worse, when he barricades himself in his room. It's so much worse.) This way, he will inevitably end up snapping at you over some noise you make or some triviality that happens; you've learned to distinguish when he can take being snapped at right back (and when he needs it as well) and when you just need to let him get the steam out of his system without any reaction from your side (because he needs those moments too). Then, he is rude, and spitting, and a right bastard, no traces of any brilliance left but sheer arrogance, stubbornness, brutality. Other times, his harsh dismissal of nutrition will render him a bit slow on the uptake--his body paying him back in its own language, a language Sherlock has never been quite proficient in--and he'll stare at you without any deduction forthcoming, his rapidly darting eyes remaining blank. You don't know who of you aches more for the breathless, low, "Oh!" of his, then.

Sherlock isn't always beautiful, isn't always brilliant.

You've come to know this throughout the years. You've known he isn't the sociopath he claims to be from the start--or, well, rather, you've felt it more than you've known, really, because before he stared into your eyes as they were soft and open and allowed you to see his were just the same--because before he collapsed into you, or you into him, before you collapsed into one another, that one night after the mess with Mary was done and you lay hunched in on yourself with a gun wound to your leg--before all this, before he said, "John," just your name, in such a way, in that way, and for once didn't look away or scoff or make a stupid joke, just kept leaning over you and kept doing what you told him to do until the ambulance arrived--because before all this you've felt but not known, felt but couldn't believe that someone like Sherlock Holmes could possibly love you, want you, need you, like this.

It was worth getting shot in Afghanistan, believing Sherlock dead for two years, going through the wreck of a marriage with a lying assassin, and then yet another gun wound--to have this one moment, to finally, oh, God, finally... to _know_.

So, no, Sherlock isn't always beautiful, isn't always brilliant. But that doesn't matter anymore now, has never really mattered anyway. It's just better now, better now than it used to be because now, Sherlock allows you to be with him and be there for him when he is neither beautiful nor brilliant.

Now he too knows he needs to be neither of those things to have you lean over him and tell him, "It's fine," and, "I'm here," and, "I love you." Now he knows being human is all right, because it doesn't make you stop carding your fingers through his hair--smooth, or flat, or rich, or greasy--and touching the nape of his neck and the small of his back, and kissing his palm and pressing his face against your neck so he can hide there.

There are black days, and abysmal moods, and terrible words. Sherlock is not always beautiful or brilliant, no, but that doesn't matter. It's a part of him, and you love him for it, and it works as it does because you aren't always strong or reliable or present either because you know what this darkness is like.

It's fine though. It's all fine. You have each other, now, finally, and should it ever be the world against the two of you again, this time you'll make it through together. You lost too much already and have too much by now to ever think of letting go again.


End file.
